Classic Sunday Morning Newspaper Cartoons

 

Superconductors That Transform Technology

Could let computers work at warp speed, save energy, and even make trains fly?

Scientists have used DNA to overcome a nearly insurmountable obstacle to engineering materials that will revolutionize electronics. Published in the journal Science on July 28, the work was performed by researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and their collaborators.

One possible outcome of these engineered materials could be superconductors, which have zero electrical resistance, allowing electrons to flow unimpeded. That means that, unlike current means of electrical transmission, they don’t lose energy and don’t create heat. 

Development of a superconductor that could be used widely at normal pressures and room temperature – instead of at extremely high or low temperatures, as is now possible – could lead to many technological wonders. These include hyper-fast computers, shrinking the size of electronic devices, allowing high-speed trains to float on magnets and slash energy use, and many more.

One such superconductor was first proposed by Stanford physicist William A. Little more than 50 years ago. Scientists have spent decades trying to make it work. However, even after validating the feasibility of his idea, they were left with a challenge that appeared impossible to overcome. Until now.

Edward H. Egelman, PhD, of UVA’s Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, has been a leader in the field of cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), and he and Leticia Beltran, a graduate student in his lab, used cryo-EM imaging for this seemingly impossible project. “It demonstrates,” he said, “that the cryo-EM technique has great potential in materials research.”  READ MORE...

Jumping Dog

 

End of Manual Transmissions

This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.

I drive a stick shift. It’s a pain, sometimes. Clutching and shifting in bumper-to-bumper traffic wears you out. My wife can’t drive my car, which limits our transit options. And when I’m at the wheel, I can’t hold a cold, delicious slushie in one hand, at least not safely. 

But despite the inconvenience, I love a manual transmission. I love the feeling that I am operating my car, not just driving it. That’s why I’ve driven stick shifts for the past 20 years.

That streak may soon be over. When it comes time to replace my current car, I probably won’t be able to get another like it. In 2000, more than 15 percent of new and used cars sold by the auto retailer CarMax came with stick shifts; by 2020, that figure had dropped to 2.4 percent. Among the hundreds of new car models for sale in the United States this year, only about 30 can be purchased with a manual transmission. 

Electric cars, which now account for more than 5 percent of car sales, don’t even have gearboxes. There are rumors that Mercedes-Benz plans to retire manuals entirely by the end of next year, all around the world, in a decision driven partly by electrification; 

Volkswagen is said to be dropping its own by 2030, and other brands are sure to follow. Stick shifts have long been a niche market in the U.S. Soon they’ll be extinct.We can’t say we weren’t warned. For years, the stick’s decline has been publicly lamented. 

Car and Driver ran a “Save the Manuals” campaign in 2010, insisting that drivers who “learned to operate the entire car” would enjoy driving more and do it better. A #SaveTheManual hashtag followed. Shifting gears yourself isn’t just a source of pleasure, its advocates have said, or a way to hone your driving. 

A manual car is also less likely to be stolen if fewer people know how to drive it. It’s cheaper to buy (or at least it used to be), and it once had lower operation and maintenance costs. 

You can push-start a manual if the battery dies, so you’re less likely to get stuck somewhere; and you can use the stick more easily for engine braking, which can reduce wear and make descending hills easier and safer.  READ MORE...

Fish School

 

Age of Problems

 

Yesterday, I saw my physical therapist for my left hip area because my Orthopedic surgeon thinks I may have bursitis...  my first visit to the therapist confirmed the bursitis diagnosis and for two days, I had heat, massage, and a couple of exercises.  But, yesterday, the therapist discovered that my left hip area and leg were not moving properly so he performed stretching movements that were not as pleasant as the other stuff that was done to me...  in fact, it HURT...  and, I don't hurt easily.

He told me that I probably walked when I should not have walked...  when I was limping and my leg compensated by tightening up...  and then the tightening up allowed bursitis to enter...  viola...  therapy.

I feel like a car that is 10 years old and when one part of the motor is fixed or replaced another part craps out on you...

So, back problems lead to hip problems that will probably lead to knee problems that will cause shoulder problems to develop because I am walking with a cane.

What is interesting here is that my Orthopedic NP sent me for one day of therapy only but the way she wrote the prescription, it was up to the therapist as to how long the therapy should last...  and insurance is good with that...  go figure?

We Encorage Death

Once you reach a certain age, you are very much cognizant of people you know dying... and while death is not a very pleasant subject about which to talk, it is nonetheless something that happens to all of us at some point in time during our lifetimes...

Some of us believe in an afterlife and that afterlife is going to take place in this marvelous place called heaven while others believe that when you are dead you are dead and there is nothing else that happens to you outside of decaying in your coffin.

Whoever created us, gave us anywhere from 80 to 100 years of life in a world of eternity.  So why just live 100 years...  why not live 500 years or 1000 years...  especially since there is no end to life in general?

and, while we are on that subject of life, why do we think that we are the only lifeforms in the universe...  with all the billions of galaxies and solar systems, there has got to be other forms of life...  otherwise what was the frigging point of creating the universe?

So death is rather confusing in that we may not really die at all...  we may just leave one body and go into another body somewhere else in the universe...  or we may float into space and become part of cosmic consciousness.

But since death is inevitable, I cannot imagine why so many people encourage it with alcohol consumption, illegal drugs, smoking, and engaging in dangerous hobbies...  death is going to come soon enough so why encourage it?

Man & Big Fish

 

Object Found on Mars

Scientists were left puzzled when a weird “spaghetti-like” object was spotted on Mars by the Perseverance rover. It sparked a lot of debate online and a number of experts came up with their own explanations about the “alien” material found on July 12. 

However, NASA has released an official statement about the object, and they said that it was actually a part of the rover itself.

According to the official briefing by the US space agency, the Dacron netting got detached from the entry, descent and landing (EDL) gear when the rover landed on the planet in February 2021.

“This particular piece of netting appears to have undergone significant unravelling/shredding, suggesting that it was subjected to strong forces,” the blog published by NASA stated.

It also said that Dacron is “a synthetic fiber embedded with resin often used in high performance sail cloth, but in the case of Perseverance was likely a part of a thermal protection blanket”.

This is not the first time that a debris from the rover was found on Mars. Earlier, parts of the EDL were found around the site where Perseverance landed, and the Ingenuity helicopter also pictured a protective shell and its parachute near a collection of rocks on the Mars surface.  READ MORE...

Winter Biking

 

Webb Telescope Shatters Records

The very first results from the James Webb Space Telescope seem to indicate that massive, luminous galaxies had already formed within the first 250 million years after the Big Bang. If confirmed, this would seriously challenge current cosmological thinking. For now, however, that’s still a big “if.”

Shortly after NASA published Webb’s first batch of scientific data, the astronomical preprint server arXiv was flooded with papers claiming the detection of galaxies that are so remote that their light took some 13.5 billion years to reach us. Many of these appear to be more massive than the standard cosmological model that describes the universe’s composition and evolution.

“It worries me slightly that we find these monsters in the first few images,” says cosmologist Richard Ellis (University College London).

Young, massive stars in newborn galaxies emit vast amounts of energetic ultraviolet radiation. As this light moves through expanding space for billions of years, the wavelengths stretch (redshift) all the way into the infrared – radiation that Webb’s instruments are sensitive to.

It takes careful spectroscopic measurements – either by Webb’s spectrometers or by the ground-based ALMA observatory that operates at even longer wavelengths – to precisely determine the redshifts, which tells you how far out into space — and thus how far back in time — you’re looking. But there’s a quick (albeit less reliable) workaround that gives a rough idea.

Neutral hydrogen atoms in intergalactic space absorb ultraviolet radiation at wavelengths shorter than 91.2 nanometers. For remote objects, this threshold also redshifts to longer wavelengths, into the infrared for the most distant galaxies. 

Since Webb’s near-infrared camera NIRCam takes measurements through a large number of filters, each covering a different wavelength band, a galaxy may be visible in some channels but not in others. The wavelength band in which the galaxy disappears roughly indicates its redshift, and the corresponding look-back time.  READ MORE...

Inside Cockpit

 

Link Between Cancer Drivers

An unexpected relationship between two of the most frequent cancer-causing factors might lead to more effective drugs.

According to a recent study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, two of the most common genetic changes that result in cancerous cells, which were previously believed to be distinct and controlled by different cellular signals, are really working together.

To treat cancer, researchers have so far concentrated on developing medications that either inhibit one or the other. Treatments that work better could result from an understanding of their cooperative effects.

Cells manufacture a protein called p53, which functions within the cell nucleus to react to stress, but mutations in the gene that makes p53 are the most common genetic abnormalities in cancer. Runaway cell proliferation in cancer is also often linked to mutations that activate a cell’s surface-located pathway called PI3K/Akt.

Cellular signaling pathways allow cells to accomplish important communications tasks that maintain healthy cell functions. The process is a bit like sending mail, which requires a specific series of steps and appropriate stamps and marks on the envelope to deliver a letter to the correct address.  READ MORE...

Admiring the View Squirrel

 

Going on Vacation

 

I have gone through 4 phases of going on vacation...

Before graduating from high school, our family vacations lasted anywhere from 2 weeks to four weeks depending on where my dad was doing his naval reserve obligation of 2 weeks of active duty.  If his training was somewhere near where the rest of the family could vacation, we would stay there for 4 weeks.

The next phase took place during my first marriage and since neither one of us earned that much of an income, our vacations were spent at home doing chores around the house.  Interestingly, we did not feel that we were missing anything.  We would drive down to the Outer Banks every once in a while and spend the week at my parent's beach house for free.

The next phase took place during my second marriage. We traveled to all sorts of places like Vegas, New Orleans, NYC, Atlanta, Ft. Lauderdale, the Gulf Coast, Canada, Vancouver, Alaska, Hawaii, Mexico, and Europe.  We also went on 12 cruises that took us to Alaska, Hawaii, the Mediterranean, and all over the Caribbean...  But, no matter where we went, we always made time to spend a couple of weeks at Myrtle Beach.

The last phase (that I currently know about) is currently taking place during my second marriage and it seems that we have burned ourselves out with vacations and now the only place that we want to go is Myrtle Beach and even then, we are not all that keen on going so it is more or less just a change of scenery for us.

We will be in Myrtle Beach this year in September as our June visit was postponed due to my back surgery.  We have an ocean-facing condo that has a living room with a balcony, a kitchen and eating area, a bathroom, and a back bedroom with a door so that I can go to bed early and not be disturbed and my wife can sleep in a little in the morning and not be disturbed.

What do we do differently down at Myrtle Beach that we do not do at home, besides sitting under an umbrella watching the Atlantic Ocean?  Not much at all other than in the evening, we get "cleaned up" as the saying goes, and venture out for dinner.  And, while we can certainly do this at home, we typically don't do it every night.

While 6 hours in the car does not seem like a lot of time, it will be this time because of my back surgery and I have been mildly ordered by my Orthopedic Surgeon to stop every two hours so that I can get out and walk for 5-10 minutes.  We normally stop once for gasoline, so the inconvenience which is not really an inconvenience is only stopping a second time since the third time to stop will be at our hotel.

Rising Moon

 

One Vitamin Keeps Brain Healthy

As a nutritional psychiatrist, I always make it a point to maintain a well-balanced diet. Much of that has to do with making sure I get all the right vitamins, especially because it’s essential to preventing cognitive decline.


And given that the risk of neurological diseases increases as we get older, one question I often get from my patients is: “What is the best vitamin for protecting our aging brains?”


Each of our microbiomes is like a thumbprint, so a truly effective eating plan is personalized to the unique needs of an individual. But the vitamin group I prioritize the most to keep my brain young and healthy are B vitamins.

The brain benefits of B vitamins
Depression, dementia and mental impairment are often associated with a deficiency of B vitamins, a study from the Wayne State University School of Medicine found.

“A B12 vitamin deficiency as a cause of cognitive issues is more common than we think, especially among the elderly who live alone and don’t eat properly,” says Rajaprabhakaran Rajarethinam, a psychiatrist and the lead author of the study.

There are eight different B vitamins, each with its own primary health benefits:

1. Increasing your energy.
Vitamin B1, or thiamin, is crucial for the basic function of our cells and the metabolism of nutrients for energy.


The brain is one of the most metabolically active organs in your body, which means it needs the support of thiamin to prevent the deficiencies that can lead to neurological problems down the line. READ MORE...

Underwater Turtle

 

Heart Medications Linked to Heart Attacks

According to a new study, patients taking beta-blockers and antiplatelet medications (such as aspirin) are at high risk of suffering a heart attack during very hot weather.

For people with coronary heart disease, beta-blockers are important medications that can improve survival and quality of life. Likewise, aspirin and other antiplatelet drugs can reduce the risk of a heart attack.

However, those protections could backfire during hot-weather events, a time when heart attacks are already more likely. A new study published on August 1 in the journal Nature Cardiovascular Research found that, among people suffering non-fatal heart attacks associated with hot weather, an outsize portion are taking these heart medications.

“Patients taking these two medications have higher risk,” said Kai Chen, an assistant professor in the Yale School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology (Environmental Health) and first author of the study. “During heat waves, they should really take precautions.”

Those safety precautions include cooling strategies like using air conditioning or visiting a public cooling center.

Air pollution, cold weather, and other external environmental factors can trigger heart attacks. There is growing evidence to suggest that hot weather can do so, too. However, epidemiologists are still working to identify which groups of people are most vulnerable to these environmental extremes.  READ MORE...

Cave Road